Author: Erica Ezeifedi

I’m loving the recent college-life YA books I’ve been seeing lately, and here, two aromantic and asexual students find themselves in a messy online situation. Sophie Chi is a first-year student at Wellesley College, and, though she’s very comfortable in her aromantic and asexual identities, she knows she’ll never fall in love. Despite this, she starts an Instagram account (“Dear Wendy”) where she — follow me — gives relationship advice. Yeah. Then, there’s Jo Ephron, another first-year student at the same school, who has created the “Dear Wanda” account, which sorta kinda rivals Dear Wendy. As Sophie and Jo bond over their shared aroace identities and get closer, neither of them knows they’re secretly online rivals, which is just the best setup for some delicious messiness.

This is part of the Elatsoe series (which I loved) but actually takes place before the first book. Here, torn away from their traditional home by a devastating flood, Shane and her mother work with their pack of ghost dogs to track down missing people. When Shane’s mother and a boy from the neighborhood both go missing after interacting with a fairy ring, Shane gathers up a crew to find them. Her brother, friends, and an untrustworthy grandparent all hit the road to find the two missing people, but soon realize that it may not just be a matter of where they are, but when they are.

I loved how the first book incorporated Lipan Apache traditions with other lore, and I’m excited to see that at play in this new book.

This has such a unique magic system that goes so well with its bloody competition. In it, Ning is still gripped by guilt surrounding her mother’s death, and now, the same poison tea that killed her mother may also take her sister, Shu. The only way Ning can think to save her sister’s life is to enter the kingdom’s magical tea-brewing competition; but to win, she’ll have to contend with backstabbers, messy court politics, and handsome strangers.

This has a lot going on…in the way that we like, of course. Here, 17-year-old Ross Quest is a master thief prodigy, descended from a long line of thieves. Thing is, she just wants to live a normal teen life, free of the odd trappings of her heisting family. But then her mother’s life is threatened, and the only way for her to save her that she can see is to enter the Thieves’ Gambit, a dangerous international heisting competition. The plot thickens, of course, once we learn that among her competitors is a smooth-talking cutie…